Retirement Planning

How much you need to retire will depend on many factors. The question simply is: what do you want to do when you stop working? Knowing this enables us to work backwards to find the funds to make it happen.

Retirement means different things to different people. Some take it as selling their business but still having a say in how it is run. Others see it as an opportunity to leave their professional career completely to spend more time doing what they really love. What you want from your retirement will have an impact on your ability to retire early – and this is something we will always discuss at the earliest opportunity.  

This is completely up to you. You don’t have to retire, of course, but we do make our clients aware of any tax implications when drawing income from other sources.

This depends on the assets you have in relation to pensions and investments and, of course, your age and how you want to live.

You will be taxed in accordance with your income. However, there will be ways to access your wealth while reducing your tax liability, depending on where your wealth is and how it can be accessed. We can talk you through your options and map out a suitable way forward as part of our retirement planning service.

Not necessarily, but it’s always a good idea to review your existing pension pot to check you are on track to achieve your financial goals for retirement. Your adviser can assist you with this.

Absolutely. If you have been employed by many firms over the years, you will probably have various pensions on file. Do consider that the annual allowance – this defines how much you can contribute to your pensions overall whilst still receiving tax relief – applies to your entire pension portfolio. 

Possibly, yes, but we will first need to check if there are any costs involved in merging your pensions together. Our team will be able to advise you further on this. 

Yes, you can, and you have lots of options on how to do this. The minimum age for pension withdrawals (without incurring heavy penalties) is 55. You can take all your pension out in a single lump sum, but only 25% of that sum would be tax-free. So you may want to only take out 25% of your total pot at one time to avoid paying income tax. Basically, there are many ways to access your funds, and when we have our consultation your adviser will explain them all to you.

We’d be happy to – and it is never too late to start a pension. If you are still in employment, you should have been auto-enrolled into your employer’s workplace pension. This means your employer will be obliged to pay contributions towards your pension pot. If you are self-employed, working under other circumstances, or would prefer to opt-out of this arrangement, we can advise you on what is possible.